Joe Conason: The Tea Party and the Midterms

[babylonsister]

http://www.observer.com/2010/opinion/tea-party-and-midterms

The Tea Party and the Midterms

By Joe Conason
November 2, 2010 | 8:25 p.m


The urge to punish politicians is understandable no matter who is in power, because they inevitably disappoint the fond hopes of their admirers and raise the hackles of their detractors — and yet that same urge is almost never satisfied for long. In the case of the midterm spanking administered to Democrats, the likelihood that voters will get what they claim to want as a result are even smaller than usual.

The fleeting thrill of ousting a particular elected official (or even dozens of them) ultimately will not bring much comfort to anyone inspired by more than mere partisan fury. The Tea Party movement and its followers claim that they were originally motivated by the failure of Republicans and Democrats alike to balance the budget, improve the economy, and reduce taxes and government waste. But their energies were diverted toward the restoration of Republican power. And the goals of the Republican leadership are entirely oriented toward a partisan victory in 2012, as they have declared more than once during the election season.

What that means in practice is no progress on the budget, the economy, taxation or the size and scope of government. As nostrums go, the Tea Party's evident enthusiasm for throwing teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public employees out of work makes very little sense in a depressed economy.

snip//

Whatever rearrangement of power on Capitol Hill results from the midterm, the surest outcome is that there will be no change in the trends that supposedly irritate the Tea Party. Even if the Republicans fulfill all the promises they have recklessly offered to their own right wing, those trends are likely to continue and even worsen. There will be no significant reduction in the deficit or the debt. There will be no substantial reform of the tax system. And there will be no safeguard against future bailouts and corporate abuse - especially if the Republicans fulfill their promises.

Even if the Republicans could somehow force through their dream budgets, the outcome would only be more of the same: enormous tax breaks for the very highest earners, likely tax increases for everyone else at either the federal or local levels or both, and higher deficits for decades into the future as revenues fall. And if they somehow repeal the banking reform legislation that passed this year, that may well ensure the repetition of the same bailouts that inspired the rise of the Tea Party.

The voters have told us that they're mad as hell and won't take it anymore. But their madness has ironically guaranteed that they will get more of exactly what they profess to despise.

[DonCoquixote]

1. A quote worthy of a signature

The voters have told us that they're mad as hell and won't take it anymore. But their madness has ironically guaranteed that they will get more of exactly what they profess to despise.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. But their madness has ironically guaranteed that they will get more of exactly what they profess to

despise.
PERFECT>

http://markmaynard.com/?p=7501

<snip>

The best part of the article is the contribution by Thomas Frank, the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. Here’s a highlight:

….Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America’s poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:

“You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining… It’s like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy.”

As Mr Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.

And here, according to the author of the article, is the big takeaway message from all of this… “If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them. They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best. There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots. As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.”

<snip>

[Jim__]

3. We just threw away any hope for serious improvement over the next 2 years. - n/t

[babylonsister]

4. We 'threw it away'? I don't know what you were watching,

but Dems worked their butts off to try to stay in the game. The economy coupled with the megabucks 'donated' by rove and corporations might have had something to do with the results.

[Jim__]

5. By "we" I mean the country. - n/t

[babylonsister]

6. OK, thanks, and I agree. There are some

achingly stupid people out there.